Chapter Eight
“‘...robot work-teams’”
In Galactic Pot-Healer, unlike on Earth, robots are much a part of daily life on Plowman’s Planet even to the point of being considered a form of life.1
“‘...no one living nearby...’”
This is further evidence as to the lack of a city-level population, predating the establishment of Diamond Head city in Galactic Pot-Healer. It would make little sense for such a place to be left unmentioned if it was present even as a town or a village.
“‘Spiddles,’ the invisible creatures said.”
As is shortly unveiled, spiddles can speak English. This would lead one to believe that the majority, of not all, of the human colonists hail from English speaking nations.
The spiddle that introduces itself to Fernwright in Galactic Pot-Healer, by contrast, communicates by way of a device which contains a prerecorded message spoken in multiple intergalactic languages.2
It is never demonstrated anywhere else in that novel if spiddles themselves can speak these languages. It is more likely that with the increased numbers of visiting aliens, it would be impractical for spiddles to learn, and be fluent in, countless tongues.
Though the specific color of the spiddles is not mentioned in Nick, one is described as being brown in Pot-Healer.3
“‘...copies of it floating around Plowman’s Planet.’”
It appears it is The Last and Final War with its less than favorable descriptions of the creatures that consist of The Grand Four barring humans, which in the sixth chapter of Nick and the Glimmung specifies this exact order of joining; printers, nunks, the human colonists, and the spiddles, is what information on the life of Plowman’s Planet is getting relayed back to Earth.
In Galactic Pot-Healer, The Book of the Kalends is widely distributed to the denizens of Plowman’s Planet in much the same way.4 On top of that it is given updated editions on the daily, like a newspaper.5
The Book of the Kalends will be discussed further and speculated on in the outro.
“‘...Grand Four, in fact, need it.'”
The Grand Four know that if they were in possession of One Summer Day, they would surely emerge victorious in the war. A guess as to why there has not been a seeming effort in acquiring it, besides the danger that it would pose, is the probable belief among a significant percentage of the Grand Four, mostly humans matching Mr. Frankis’s view in the previous chapter, that this book is not real and not worth the risk of approaching Glimmung in any way just to confirm whether it exists or not.
“‘Even Klakes...’”
No piece of information is obscure enough that One Summer Day won’t take into account within its pages.
This is the last mention of Klakes in the story.
“‘...past and the future...’”
A characteristic One Summer Day possesses that matches the description from both the book described in the Earth phone encyclopedia and The Book of the Kalends: its ability to foretell of events before they occur.6 This will be demonstrated in chapter twelve.
“‘...once a happy place,’”
The planet being at peace before Glimmung’s arrival seems to be the one nugget of information that both sides of the war agree upon.
“‘...their struggle began before this planet existed.’”
If this spiddle is telling the truth, this means that both the printers and Glimmung are not native to Plowman’s Planet and that they are an older race of aliens that have been fighting each other on at least one previous planet.
As to giving this conflict a time frame of any kind, one character in Galactic Pot-Healer, a robot named Willis, claims that land life on Plowman’s Planet first appeared “‘a billion years ago.’”7 The fact that he is referring to life and not the planet itself coming into existence means this puts the number even higher for whenever the planet formed and consequently a number higher than that one for when the war between Glimmung and the printers began.
Though there is no outright stated explanation as to why the conflict started, there is one possible theory that could explain Glimmung’s connection with the printers. This will be touched upon in the notes for chapter fourteen and fleshed out further in the outro.
“...he could tell what it was.”
This paragraph is almost verbatim recycled from Dick’s short story The Father-Thing.8 Unlike Beyond Lies the Wub, this story could be connected to the Glimmung universe. More relating its context in said continuity will be related in the closing speculations of this blog.
1) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pgs. 92-94
2) Ibid, pgs. 71-72
3) Ibid, pg. 71
4) Ibid, pg. 72
5) Ibid
6) Ibid, pgs. 26,76-77
7) Ibid, pg. 109
8) The Philip K. Dick Reader (Citadel Press, 1997) pg. 109
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